This is the view from the bedroom window of the cottage: 6 a.m., low tide, clouds rolling out from Goose Cove into Frenchman's Bay. The temperature is 38 degrees, no wind that I can see. Spring is arriving slowly. My friend has filled the cottage with daffodils and forsythia, but the weather is not soft, though tomorrow is May.

In an hour I will walk up to the house and drink coffee and visit. For now Tom and I are lolling. We have no hard plans for the day. A hike somewhere. A nap eventually. And then I'll make mushroom soup for our friends and us. It is lovely to be so peaceable and unfocused.

In fact, I feel almost wordless . . . a sort of sleepy inarticulate pleasure that doesn't require framing, even rejects it . . . as if Why does describing matter? as if Just hush up and be. These are funny instructions for a poet, but then again: if my work life is shaping language, maybe my vacation life shouldn't be.

Or maybe I'll suddenly write a giant poem.

Well, I'm back . . . though the computer's webcam problem is not fixed, and the computer guys are scratching their heads and ordering new cables, and I'm going to be without the machine again. 

I hope your week has been interesting. Mine has been slow. Between the rain, the wind, the cold, and the laptoplessness, my activities have primarily involved chilly walks and much reading. While I was "gone," I finished the Aeneid, Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans, McMurtry's Sin Killer, and half of Hazzard's The Bay of Noon. I wasn't joking when I said I had some time to read.

So today I'll catch up on all of the desk work I've let slide. I'll do some gardening, if the windy cold allows, and get ready for our weekend jaunt up the coast to our friends' cottage near Acadia. Next time I write to you, I'll be staring out into the cove, watching gulls and lobster boats. I can't wait.

I spent most of yesterday in the gardens: planting, weeding, cultivating, watering; also bagging sticks, restacking firewood, moving stones. There's still much to be done, but I caught up with much of it. As you can see, the garden boxes are thriving. I took the cold frame off the lettuce (front box), and in the back box you can see the enthusiastic garlic.

Tulips are opening everywhere. Above is a modern variety; below are two photos of species tulips: older, hardier varieties, often very small, with elegant colors and shapes. They thrive even in terrible soil, and the bulbs are long-lasting. 

And here is my newest hellebore, glowing outside my back door.

Today the computer (yet again) is supposed to go into the shop, so you may or may not hear from me tomorrow morning. Imagine me housecleaning and gardening and reading the Aeneid and cooking chili.
 

Yesterday's Poet's Table class was so refreshing: I was able to sit back and enjoy without being responsible for running the room, plus I got two decent pre-drafts out of Beth's prompts. The group was cheerful and engaged, and altogether it was an excellent afternoon.

Today I've got a few desk things to do this morning, but mostly I'm hoping to be outside in the garden. I've started cultivating beds, carefully, because not everything has sprouted yet. But the maple seedlings are taking hold fast, so they need to be squelched; and with the tulips beginning to open, the fluffed-up soil will serve as a showcase for their stiff beauty. I want to plant a second crop of lettuce and arugula; I need to do a little watering; maybe I should even mow grass. The garden needs me today, and I'm happy at the thought of all of my little duties.

Home again, thank goodness, thank goodness. I am so glad to be wrapped in my accustomed bathrobe in my accustomed corner, drinking my usual coffee from my usual cup. It's been a good trip all around, but little Alcott House and its inhabitants are glad to see me, and likewise.

Tom and I strolled down to our favorite restaurant for dinner, strolled home, listened to baseball, dozed on the couch. It was a highly middle-aged reunion, but delightful nonetheless.

Now, this morning, I am thinking lightly of laundry and groceries and yard work. I'll be attending the afternoon's Poet's Table session--and I'm looking forward to writing under Beth's guidance, after two weeks away from my desk. (If you'd like to join us, it's not too late, and it's dirt-cheap.)

Otherwise, the weekend can take its own course. Sunshine, mid-50s, and a garden in need of puttering. The Aeneid asking to be read. 

Another quiet day in Vermont . . . into town to grocery-shop with my mom . . . an afternoon of card playing with my dad . . . a walk through the fields . . . then I made dinner (salmon, asparagus, caramelized onions, roasted potatoes) and we watched a terrible Cary Grant movie called Mr. Blandings Buys His Dream House. This morning I'll be heading back to Portland with a small batch of vegetable seedlings (cauliflower, cabbages), eggs from their hens, an oregano plant . . . little tokens of country spring for my city homestead.

I've got a lot of work waiting for me, as per usual. According to T, the cat is in a terrible humor. Certainly I'll be happy to stay in one spot for a few days. I'm tired of being on the road.

It's a cloudy morning in western Vermont. The grass is patched with snow, though daffodils are brilliant along the house's sheltered southern face. Yesterday, as my mom and I walked the edges of the fields, we saw goldfinches spraying up out of the brush, their summer-yellow incongruous against the snowy backdrop. Green grass argued with a lowering sky. The season cannot make up its mind.

Today I expect the last of the snow will melt away. My dad has not planted anything yet, but his garden is tilled and ready. Maybe we'll have a chance to work outside, or maybe not. The air is harsh but milding, chill but shifting. Spring does not want anyone to make plans yet.

Hitting the road again this morning, this time revisiting winter instead of jumping forward into high spring. Vermont got snow yesterday, while we were having our gale, and I know my dad hasn't been able to plant anything yet. I expect I won't be doing much outside with my parents, other than admiring the mud.

In the meantime, I want to let you know about a Frost Place Studio Session program on Saturday afternoon: Beth Curran, a long-time participant in our programming, will be leading a two-hour Poet's Table session focusing on springtime poems and writing prompts. The zoom afternoon is open to anyone, at any level: a mere $20 per person, $30 per pair. I would love to see you there.

It's a rainy, windy, stormy morning here in Portland, and I did not expect to be writing to you about it. But the computer repair guys, who told me last week to bring the laptop in on Monday, were not actually at work when I brought the laptop in on Monday. So I guess the webcam fix will have to wait till next week.

Thus, here I am after all, glad to be warm and dry and under cover. Rain is whipping around the house. Gusts are so high that Tom can't go to work this morning as he and his tools would be soaked, so he is enjoying an unaccustomed Wednesday morning in bed.

Yesterday was a a beautiful bright day and it was all about chores: I cleaned the house; hung clothes on the line; did the shopping; bought potting soil; planted potatoes, parsley, scallions, carrots, and cilantro; weeded a little; made chocolate pudding; stir-fried shrimp and asparagus; and finally sat down and decided to be tired. Tomorrow I'll be on the road again, heading to Vermont to spend a couple of days with my parents. So today I'm glad, very glad, to have a day with my own things, and to have most of the housework behind me. I've got a  long list of Frost Place tasks, but possibly I'll manage to do a little writing too. I hope so. But even just being quiet will be a refreshment. All of this teaching and traveling and play-watching and chatter has been wonderful but strange, and my solitary self has been rattling around inside it like a marble.

Outside the weather is wild: windows running with wet, gale roaring through the maples. Up north and in the mountains it's snowing, but we are rain and wind and churning seas. In the gloaming I can see daffodil and tulip buds straining and bobbing; the new grass is a vibrating green; twigs and branches are clacking at roof and windows. The house is a schooner, a bird's nest, a soap bubble. Anything could happen.

I made it home by 8:30 last night, ate Tom's good dinner of lamb and rice, and was promptly devoured by sleep in the magnificent bed. And now this morning I am awake too early because Tom will be working in southern Maine this week and has a long commute. So I greet you squintily.

My plans today are exercise class, laundry, housework, potato planting, weeding, with a visit to the computer repair shop in between. You likely won't hear from me tomorrow as the guys will probably have to replace a faulty part. But I am okay about being computer-free for a couple of days. I have plenty to do in the physical realm.

I got home too late to inspect the garden, and I'm anxious to see what's been happening out there. I'm supposed to head to Vermont by mid-week, so I'll have very little time to spend in my own place. I want to make the most of these couple of days.

On the whole, I got more sleep than I usually do in Brooklyn. Still, we apparently walked 10 miles in one day, and probably nearly as much on the other ones. A day or so of puttering will not come amiss.

 

Cherry blossoms at Brooklyn Botanic Garden; below, a beautiful Japanese maple just coming into leaf.

We began the morning by trudging up the hill into Prospect Park and then across the plaza to the botanic garden. It was a gorgeous day to visit: cherries just coming into flower, magnolias and bluebells at their height. We ambled among the gardens and then back down through the park, where we saw wood ducks and coots and a red-winged blackbird.

This morning I will slowly gather myself for church, and then make my way to Manhattan to catch the bus. It's been a long time since I've been to Easter service, and I'm looking forward to it. But I'm also looking forward to getting home to my own garden and my own bed.

We spent yesterday morning at the Morgan Library. I was excited to see the Holbein show, but what ended up jumping me was the Woody Guthrie show upstairs.

This is Woody's fiddle, which he took with him to France when he was serving in World War II.  On the lower left you can read where he carved the words "This machine killed 10 fascists."

The library also had a gorgeous broadside of a Ray Lichtenstein print alongside an Allen Ginsburg poem; manuscripts of Shelley and Dickinson and Schubert and Gwendolyn Brooks; a Gutenberg Bible . . . so many records of humanity in language.

After the museum we wandered through the Central Park Zoo, finally managed to find something to eat in a strange neighborhood that seemed to have no sandwiches, and headed back to Brooklyn, where by 9 p.m. I had to bow out of the social whirl and go back to the apartment and climb into bed. I'd been overcome by days of walking for miles, of getting up early and staying up late, of rarely being alone.

Now, at 7 a.m., after a long deep night of sleep, I am reconnoitering with myself. In a little while I'll get up and make some coffee, take a shower, read a little; later in the morning I'll step back into the whirl, but a quieter version . . . a long walk up to the botanical gardens, a stroll through decorated spring. Otherwise, I have no particular plans for the day. Maybe bookstores, maybe thrift stores. Something local. I've done all of the Manhattan I need to do on this visit.

This morning I write to you from bed. I am waking up slowly, and taking pleasure in it, as yesterday was a whirlwind. By 7:15 I was out of the apartment, scuttling toward the subway stop, snaking my way toward New Jersey. And then I spent the morning teaching seven (eight? I could be muddled) high school English classes, bam bam bam, one after the other, tag-teaming with my friend Holly . . . a job that was completely unplanned on my part and thus equal parts exhilarating and O my lord.

Then a quick Cuban sandwich and back to Manhattan, where I met P for the first of the two plays we saw yesterday: the invited dress rehearsal of Islander, a two-woman musical set on a Scottish isle, which was charming and beautifully performed. And, then, after months of anticipation, we climbed into our balcony seats for The Scottish Play. It was tremendous, everything I'd hoped for. I cried over MacDuff's "what, all my pretty chickens" speech; I cried over Macbeth's "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech. Daniel Craig's command of the language was glorious: it was an extraordinary verbal performance. I don't think I'll ever be the same.

Outside, in the dusky daylight, the trash collectors are bumping among the bins. Traffic wanders past: thin on this side street; heavier on Fourth beyond the corner. In an hour I'll step out of the apartment and into the stream of bodies striding down the avenue, down into the subway, toward Manhattan. The tension may be lower today, or it may not. Yesterday the platforms were full of cops; we'll see what today brings.

This morning I'm heading to New Jersey, to the school where I'll spend the morning. Then, in the afternoon, an invited dress rehearsal for a play (I don't know the name) and Macbeth at night. In the interstices: walking, sitting, watching, talking.

So far my visit to the city has been what it usually is: a whirlwind of eating and chatter, with friends I've known for most of my life. And yet everyone is under stress. Fear is so easy to trigger.

Still, there have been beauties. Familiar affections. Daffodils everywhere. Trees in bloom. Lingering on a patio in shirtsleeves. Three Iris Murdoch novels cadged off a free shelf.

Greetings from the back of the Concord Coach Lines bus that is hauling me south to New York City. A thin morning light glimmers on the tarmac stretching ahead. We have just whipped through the York toll plaza and will soon be crossing the Piscataqua River into New Hampshire. The sky is striped with low clouds that kind of look like tire tracks in snow. It's daytime, but only barely, and so far there's no sign of sun.

The bus is full, though I did manage to snag one of the desirable single seats, so I can stick out my elbows and wriggle around as much as I like. The Dramamine has kicked in and I am feeling slightly cotton-headed, but at least I can type this note and read the Aeneid without getting seasick. Across the aisle a family of young boys is consuming Cheez-its at a rapid rate. No hour is too early for Cheez-its, if you are 11 years old.

And now we are on the Piscataqua Bridge . . . I see a power plant smoking on the bank, the river unfolding beneath us . . . and now it is gone and we are back on land driving past the Denny's signs, gas station signs, and a clutch of sad little plastic townhouses that huddle up against the highway like lost souls.

I'll stop traveloguing shortly. New York is still hours away, and soon I will turn my attention to napping, and getting some reading done. I may or may not have a chance to write to you tomorrow morning as I have to be in Jersey City quite early. But the weather report says it's supposed to be 80 degrees in the city on Thursday! I can hardly believe in such temperatures. Do they exist?

Yesterday was a long day--so much driving, sandwiched around an intense, day-long session with high schoolers. But I powered through, and today should be less exhausting. This morning I'll be finishing an editing project, and then I'll teach a zoom class this afternoon; in between I'll be doing laundry and packing for NYC and prepping house and garden for my departure. But at least I won't be driving for hours on either end. And tomorrow I can let the bus do all of the work.

It will be drizzly here today, and warm, and the gardens will green and glow before my eyes. All of this travel will put me behind with weeding, but such is life. I'll catch up on Monday. And I'm hoping to do some writing, or at least some intense note taking, while I'm away. After a morning in the classroom on Thursday, the rest of the trip will be play: Macbeth, the Holbein show at the Morgan, Central Park in the spring, dinners and the social whirl. Surely a few words will come.

I actually managed to write a keeper phrase during class yesterday, something that always surprises me, especially when I'm working with young people . . . not because young people are less inspirational than adults (they certainly are not) but because the lesson structure and pacing needed for kids of this age keeps me focused on them, not on myself. So I'll be happy to have that line to mess around with on the bus or the park bench . . . a small stone to ponder and play with.

I slept beautifully last night, dreaming of "a lot of actors, a palace, intrigue, interesting clouds, odd paint colors, fancy floors, big dresses." At least that what's I wrote in my dream book, though I can't recall the melodrama or who those actors were. Now, at this late hour of 6:30, I am ensconced in my couch corner with my cup of black coffee, feeling rested and refreshed, despite my disappointment at having no memory of the palace intrigue or the big dresses.

Tomorrow morning you won't hear from me as I'll have already been on the road for an hour, heading north for my teaching day in Monson. I could have gone up after this afternoon's chapbook class, but that seemed hard too, given how tired my eyes get after Zoom sessions. So the weather report and I opted for the marathon day.

Today is supposed to be lovely: sunny, in the 50s; and after two days of rain, spring should explode. This morning I'll hang clothes on the line, run out to the grocery store, and maybe go for a walk or putter a bit in the garden, if the soil dries out. Then after lunch I'll retreat to my room and teach my zoom class . . . with a working computer screen and a functional zoom link--a welcome respite from last Sunday's craziness.

I did get the housework done yesterday, and the bread baked, and then Tom and I went out for poutine and beer, and then I listened to the Red Sox lose to the Yankees. (Paul was at that game and was undoubtedly crabby.) Otherwise, I've been reading Le Carre's A Perfect Spy, playing cards, letting my tensions ebb, getting myself into a travel state of mind. It feels strange to be leaving home just as planting season begins. Then again, I always plant too early. So maybe I should always leave.

I had a slow day yesterday, mostly rain and reading and baseball on the radio. But today I'll get back on the stick: I need to clean house and bake bread, and maybe do some work outside, though the weather looks uncooperative for that. Tom and I are getting used to being a pair again; I'm remembering how to cook for two, how to clean up for two. It's so radically different, caretaking for two instead of one. You wouldn't think it would make such a difference in a day.

In the course of an email thread about entirely different topic, a friend of mine--a well-known poet--mentioned my piece "Mr. Kowalski," which she called a "major poem." I was nonplussed, of course, and head-in-the-sand embarrassed, and unable to respond elegantly. But the comment has been scratching at me ever since: the praise, yes, but also what does it mean, to have written something so large? By "large," I don't mean "great"--I mean "covering so much ground," which that poem does, whether one likes it or not. (And some people don't like it, and have told me so.) Naturally I worry that all of my poems should be large; or that I'll never write another large poem; or that large poems overshadow the value of all the smaller poems; or that it's too big for the new collection . . . worry, worry, worry: it's what I do, always second-guessing myself.

The poem is not new. I first published it in 2013, but it never showed up in a collection till now . . . it was too large, too much. But this time around, I took the risk. Now I'm wondering if it's still too big for its box.

Tom's home!

We had such an excellent reunion last night . . . a lovely combination of "I'm so glad to be home" and "I had so much fun" (on his part) and "I'm so glad you're here" and "I did well on my own" (on my part)--and now here we are, in our accustomed weekend-morning places: me downstairs with my coffee cup, Tom in bed with his coffee cup, and the cat snarling and stomping and complaining about the rain.

Because it is pouring out there . . . a windy, drenching, baseball-opening-day-canceling sort of storm, battering roof and windows and driving the cat to distraction--Tom's very favorite bed-lounging weather, though I, unfortunately, have got to put on a raincoat and drag the bins to the curb. Not that I begrudge him his lounging. He's spent two weeks away from the magnificent bed.

With the exception of my trash chore, today will start at whatever pace it feels like starting. All of the editing is now off my desk (for the moment), so I'll be able to concentrate on classwork, which won't take all day. I need to make another visit to the computer repair guys to ask if my now non-working camera was a casualty of the screen replacement. I want to go to the fish market, and Tom has a giant pile of dirty laundry that I'll offer to do for him. Mostly, though, I'm hoping to hang around with this guy I like. I think I've told you about him.

Yesterday was editing, editing, editing, eye strain, eye strain, eye strain, but I did get through the giant stack, and my neighbor and I were able to take a mid-afternoon work break and drive out to the nursery for pansies, which was refreshing.

So today I can turn my attention to a couple of smaller editing projects, and my Monson syllabus, and some chapbook-class prep, and some errands. And then Tom will arrive home at some point before dinner, and we will have a reunion.

Late in the day I potted up the pansies, and planted my new hellebore (of course I couldn't just limit myself to pansies) in the Shed Patch, near the back door. I did a little watering and some seedling inspection: peas are up; spinach is up; radishes are up; greens in the cold frame are thriving. There are three ramps sprouting from the grocery-story ramps I dug in last year ("That will never work," said Paul. Hah!). The white crocuses are glorious; the blue scylla is full of bees.

On Monday, when I was computer-less, I went to the Goodwill and brought home an excellent book haul, which I have been slowly sorting through. For a total of $9 I acquired John Le Carre's The Perfect Spy (well loved by Philip Roth); Shirley Hazzard's The Bay of Noon (she's a somewhat overlooked novelist whose writing style is often compared to Compton-Burnett's); The Best American Erotic Poems, edited by David Lehman (because of course); Kazuo Ishiguro's When We Were Orphans (he wrote The Remains of the Day and somehow I've never read any of his novels); and Larry McMurtry's Sin Killer (because Larry and I go way back). Plus, I've got Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter to pick up at the library and Tess Hadley's new novel and a history of Ukraine on hold.

All of this reading material gives me a warm feeling of security. No need to be anxious. I have books.

These are two of my ramp seedlings. Last year I bought a handful from Whole Foods: ramps that had been improperly harvested because the entire root system had been pulled up. But that turned out to work well for me.

Scylla is so beautiful and so tough, bursting out of ledges and tree roots, fighting up through terrible packed soil.

Ruckus always likes to be color-coordinated with his environment. He looks cute but is probably thinking about killing chipmunks.

Good morning! Three days and $600 later, I have returned to the Internet, sporting a brand-new screen and display assembly on my MacBook Pro. Ugh. But hurray. It's been a stressful few days, not just with the laptop but with various residual and overlapping matters, and I am hoping that I can iron some of that out this week. Tom is coming home tomorrow and then, beginning on Monday, I'll be entering an insane two-weeks-mostly-on-the-road period--Monson, New York, Vermont. In short, I've got stuff to do.
So, here I am, getting ready to do it. This morning I'll re-engage with my exercise class (another casualty of my computer problems), and then turn to the giant stack of editing that appeared on my desk over the weekend. I've got to address that ASAP, write a syllabus for the Monson class, prep for Sunday's chapbook session, do a bunch of other stuff that I can't even remember off the top of my head. But it will all get done. Thank goodness for computer repair guys who work fast.

Yesterday Teresa and I had our Aeneid phone call, and a few passages rose up to me from that conversation. Here are a couple of them:

Aeolian Vulcan hurried on this work [of making a shield for Aeneas],

As tender light and birdsong from the eaves

Wakened Evander [a local chieftain] in his simple home.

The old man rose, tied on Etruscan sandals,

Draped himself in a tunic, hung a sword belt

And an Arcadian sword from his right shoulder,

While from the other swept a panther skin.

Down from the doorstep two dogs came with him

And closely paced before their master's steps.

After having read so much Wendell Berry over the past the few weeks, I came to this passage with the sense that I'd stepped back into an ancient world that was not so dissimilar from western Kentucky, or central Maine, or western Pennsylvania. Barring the outfit, Evander could be any old farmer waking up early and stepping out onto his land with his dogs. 

Another passage that struck me to the bone was this one, spoken between two very young men who are shortly about to die in battle. I don't think any commentary can do justice to this question, so I'll say nothing about it, and just let you consider it.

Nisus asked, "Is it gods who make me want this,

Or do we make our deadly urges gods?"

 NEWS FLASH

The screen on my laptop has died, and I am currently patching together a Zoom connection between my keyboard and my TV screen so that I can manage to teach today's chapbook class.

However, tomorrow the computer will be going into the shop, so I will be unable to write my usual morning note to you for at least a couple of days . . . and maybe, ominously, for many days. I guess we'll see.

Wish me luck in panic world. I'll be getting some gardening done, when I'm not screeching into the mirror about all of the work I'm not doing.

Last night's dinner party was everything I'd hoped for: food came out well; conversation was lively and rich; poets were delighted not to be talking about their own poems. It felt festive, really, as if there were some occasion drawing us together.

And yet Ukraine was on my mind, as it always is these days. So I read my friends this excerpt from Susanna Braund's introduction to Sarah Ruden's translation of Virgil's Aeneid:

The Aeneid has been taken as the model or template for dozens of epic poems in European languages. Episodes from it, especially the story of Dido and the sack of Troy, have been reworked in many different literary and musical forms, serious and comic. For example, the founding work of modern Ukrainian literature is the 1798 travesty of the Aeneid by Ivan Kotlyarevsky in which the Trojans are depicted as hard-drinking Cossacks; this in turn inspired operas in the early twentieth century by Yaroslav Lopatinsky (Aeneas on His Wanderings, 1906) and Mykola Lysenko (Eneida, 1910), a 1985 rock opera, also entitled Eneida, by Serhiy Bedusenko, and a full-length animated movie by Volodymyr Dakhno released in 1991, the year in which the Ukrainian parliament declared independence.

In other words, Aeneas' fixation on loss, homeland, and lineage is the foundational narrative, the national myth, of Ukraine.

I wanted to know more about that "1798 travesty," so I did a quick Wikipedia search for Ivan Kotlyarevsky and found this quotation by him . . . though I'm not sure which of his works it appears in: 

Where the love for the Motherland inspires heroism, there an enemy force will not stand, there a chest is stronger than cannons.

Apparently, a university in Kharkiv is named after him, as are "numerous boulevards and streets in Ukrainian cities."

So. Ukrainian poets. Ukrainian badassery. Ukrainian devastation. All one big picture.

I teach all day in Monson, and then am wending my way down through the towns and woods and fields toward the highway when I notice that my tire-pressure light is on. Ugh. But the closest gas station is . . . Harmony. So I drive a few more miles south and pull into the potholed lot and nervously walk through the door. What if they don't remember me? What if I have to remind them who I am? But Diane's face lights up when she sees me, and suddenly I feel close to tears. Her brother Tracy waves from the midst of his conversation. Leroy puts air in my tires, hums over the frost heaves and the road washouts, and sends me on my way. A tiny interaction, but it breaks the ice, my ice. I can come back to the gas station on another day. I will be okay.

* * *

Last night I fell asleep on the couch at 8, groggily dragged myself to bed by 9, and slept hard all night. I don't know why I was so pole-axed. But today will be a lovely one, and I am glad to be entering it so well rested. After yesterday's rain, there will be sun and towels on the line and crocuses in bloom. And my little dinner party. I've got a lemon shortcrust in the freezer, waiting for baking. I'll make the tart filling today (more lemon), put together some minestrone, make some garlic bread . . . nothing too complicated, with leftovers I can manage as a bachelor. I have to go grocery shopping; I want to do a bit of pre-party housework; I want to bask outside in the modest sunlight. But I have all day ahead of me; I can linger here with my coffee and books for as long as I like. I can watch the day open over the roofs and steeple. On these dark-blue mornings our little neighborhood looks like a postcard village: church and trees and sky and houses. It's hard to believe I live in such a nook. Harmony was many things, but cute it was not.

 Greetings from the homeland.

At daybreak I sit in a window overlooking a busted-up foundation, a woody swale, some junky fence parts and tired vehicles, and further a trio of brightly half-painted clapboard buildings--yellow, blue, dark red--and further Route 15 with its occasional log trucks and pickups, and further, across the road and up a hill, the former Monson Elementary, now a community center, clinic, and library. There's considerable snow here, in every shady patch, in every filthy plow pile, but it's fading from south-facing yards and foundations. In the east the sun is rising through the trees. The sky is hazy and pale, darker on the horizon.

Tom is still abed, but when he gets up we'll trudge over to the general store and find something for breakfast.  Last night we hung out with artists at the bar, and I spent a fair amount of time talking to a local man who was fascinating on the subjects of paper mills, drag racing, and hermits. 

Now, this morning, I must reconfigure my brain for teaching, though I don't see why those subjects can't come into it.